Axel Petersén

6 degrees of Mustafa Arhan

It is about oriental rugs. It is about strangers and tricksters. It is about Sweden. It is about you and me.

In his film Axel Petersén portraits the oriental rug dealer Mustafa Arhan, an 83 year old Malmö legend frequently appearing in the Malmö section of Swedish society pages. For over forty years he has been, or has been playing, the exotic other in Malmö’s high society: a gentleman’s gentleman in the posh part of town of the windy working class city. Malmö has been treating him well, but he has one problem. For the past ten years he has been fighting local carpet swindlers, pretending to be him or his son, going round Malmö, knocking doors, selling machine made (false or imitation) rugs. This charade must come to an end. The film explores, beyond Arhan and his local struggles, themes as exotism, orientalism, cultural assimilation and the urge to fit in but at the same time stick out.

Axel Petersén, born 1979 in Stockholm, is a visual artist and filmmaker. He has produced several feature and short films, video and photography installations that were shown in exhibitions and screenings in galleries and museums, film festivals and cinemas worldwide. He studied at FAMU – Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles.